Post
by Chaos Angel » Mon Feb 03, 2003 12:58 am
MPEG is both a video file and a codec. So, when you download an MPEG (usually an MPEG-1, MEPG-2's are DVD files), you are essentially downloading a video file with all of the information you'll need to watch it included.
AVIs are a video file that operates with a seperate compressor. You need an external compressor to watch AVIs. HuffYuv is lossless and used for editing, DivX and XviD are two different codecs that are both used for distribution. AVIs can only be viewed if the proper codec used to compres them is installed on your computer. If it is, the the AVI is decompressed via the codec and can be viewed. Without that codec, the file cannot be viewed because the computer has no fuxxing idea how to decompress and render the video stream.
As has been said before, download DivX or XviD to watch AVIs. I believe XviD also works with some DivX files if it is encoded in DivX-compatible format, so try that first as it is better IMHO. However, if you need DivX, try DivX 3.21 alpha first, then 4, then 5 as a last resort. DivX five has spyware and you can't get all of the features of it unless you buy it. The others are all free. Course, you can run Ad-Aware and kill the spyware and it still works fine, but that's not the point.